


We Praise Beasts

by Saintduma



Series: Traumatic Neuromae [2]
Category: Frostiron - Fandom, Iron Man (Movies), IronFrost - Fandom, Loki - Fandom, The Avengers (2012), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Avenger Loki, BAMF Loki, BDSM, Bad BDSM Etiquette, Extremis, Good Loki, Iron Man 3 Spoilers, Jötunn Loki, Loki Angst, M/M, Post Iron Man 3, Tony Angst, noncon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-08
Updated: 2013-05-27
Packaged: 2017-12-10 18:41:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 8
Words: 14,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/788984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saintduma/pseuds/Saintduma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The end of Tony and Loki's relationship comes when the world and Nine Realms are in a state of peace.  Alone and with no higher purpose and regarded as a hero, or at least a good guy, by Midgard and Asgard alike, Loki is left without a compass.  </p>
<p>What better direction than down?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. time makes new wounds

_“You were amazing, with Pepper. You were exactly what I needed. And then-- you were something for me to champion. I had a purpose, with you, to make sure-- to make them see what you had done. What you were doing. You got us through Extremis and the Dark Elves and Thanos-- you went up every time, played the dubious agent, the turncoat, you were brilliant. You are brilliant. You’ve...” Tony took a deep breath, and sighed it out on the next phrase. “Always been brilliant.”_  
 _“I am sensing a very dark ‘but’, here.” He was feeling blindsided. How had he missed-- this? Whatever this was?_  
 _“You know, at night, lying beside you, I have no doubts. I watch you sleeping sometimes and I know for a fact that you will always be the scapegoat when we need you, that your scheming will always end with us on top. Ragged and winded, but on top. You’re the king of narrow victories and you’ve been crowning us the lauded victors for years now--”_  
 _“Tony, what are you trying to tell me?” Why had he asked? He hadn’t wanted to know._  
 _“I-- you were my sandbag, Loki. You were my way to not be alone after Pepper. And when I didn’t need to not be alone any more, you were my project, my way of occupying myself when the world wasn’t endangered. But-- I don’t need a sandbag, any more. And for the most part, the world has accepted you’re playing on our--”_  
 _“Tony. The point.”_  
 _Tony was silent for a long time. Loki felt his heart sinking into his stomach. And yet the words still dazed him_.  
 _“I want out.”_

Loki woke suddenly and dragged himself hurriedly out of the backseat of his car where he’d been sleeping. The hot, thick air didn’t help the weight in his chest, but he didn’t want to be cold any more. There wasn’t any freezing out what had happened. The tropical climate made things dreamlike, when he was awake. The problem was that his dreams were too often memories. 

“Ey, Loki,” called a voice, and Loki looked up, masking the sting that had woken him with one of his wide smiles. A woman waved from across the road, her two children beside her waving as well. He raised a hand in greeting. She spoke in Costa Rican Spanish. “Are you coming to the fireworks tonight?”

“On the beach?” he asked in reply. 

“They’re going to have sand sculptures all day long beforehand!” the younger of the two children chirped. Loki gave the child another smile. 

“I will be there,” he said. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.” 

September 27th. Dia de Desafio. The day Thanos fell. 

Asgardians had nightmares sometimes, too.

==============

He ate free wherever he went, though he had stopped eating unless specifically invited. The layman, it seemed, universally accepted him as a hero, even where most intelligence agencies still reserved judgement. He had his throne of heroism, now, and his worship, and these were things that satisfied Loki. He enjoyed that people asked for his signature, for photos with him, even though it was far from novel at this point. He liked that when he went places, and asked for a room, the best one was provided, and no payment was ever asked. These were things he deserved, after all, and understanding how quickly heroes could fall in personal estimations, he was as gracious as a god should be. He never overstayed his welcome, was a considerate guest, and a lively entertainer at the inevitable parties. 

People would ask, naturally, about the Avengers. Whether he was one. Who he’d seen recently. What they were up to, now. And he gave whitewashed answers that were saucy enough for them to be happy with his response, but gave no actual information. He could give information, if he wanted to. He was hardly out of the loop. But the questions seemed so irrelevant, so beside the point. They were the questions of celebrity curiosity, not of personal inquiry. Gossip. Sometimes it stirred up the old bitterness, the impulse to exert power, but those things never ended the way he needed them to, and they would not now. 

Besides, SHIELD was always watching. 

Here, in this rural Central American hamlet, he was a celebrity, but the place was so poor that his car was quite literally the best bed in town. The fireworks they would watch that night were launched from a resort that was just far enough away that no one who worked at it lived in the village, and everyone who had left the hamlet to work there, stayed there. They had phones, and clean running water, and even a little med station that could diagnose and administer most medications with a scan, but life continued for this hamlet much the same it had for many many years. 

Loki appreciated it. There were no massive parties to welcome him, only a gentle curiosity that had waned back into day to day life quickly, adjusted to his presence and continued on. He slept in his car, showered at the public showers, and when he wanted, he helped. They were appreciative, but didn’t pressure him to do anything. He could leave his car and disappear, if he liked, into the jungles, and wander for days on end. No one in the village worried for him. He was a god, after all. He did as he liked. There was nothing novel about gods to these people. 

That was why he was still here. Once their initial curiosity had been satiated, he had become simply a visiting god. They left little baskets of fruit offerings on the hood of his car, sometimes, and were pleased when he ate them. They never prayed to him, other than that. He was not their god, after all. Simply a god. 

There was something comforting to that. The space it allowed him. His brother had been right, though the assertion had come long after Loki had arrived at the same conclusion: a throne suited him ill. Godhood was enough. He was not tied to a place or people that needed to be tended like sheep. Humanity was talented at devising its own maladies, but it was also clever enough to address them. 

That line of thinking always brought him back to Tony. 

Loki turned himself physically back towards the village when the man ghosted through his mind, deciding it was time to walk down to the beach, and perhaps start a sand sculpture. His feet had carried him most of the way up a nearby mountain already, a short morning jaunt for him, now. He had wandered all over the nearby ranges, distancing himself from the humanity he had saved now dozens of times and understood really no better than when he had made his first journey here. He thought he’d begun to understand, with Tony--

He paused, and turned. A valley was just barely visible through the trees, and in that valley there was most certainly a vegetation-covered manmade building. 

And it was occupied.

=========================

“What kind of an idiot are you?!”

It was a disorienting question to wake up to. 

“Do not address my brother so harshly, he has barely woken--”

“Shut it, Goldilocks, he knows he’s an idiot.”

“He has been gravely wounded. If you cannot be hospitable--”

“It’s his own--”

“Be quiet, both of you.” Loki relaxed on hearing Natasha’s voice. She, more than even Stark, understood the games he played. Almost as well as he played them. Slowly, painfully, he opened his eyes. 

Tony leaned against the wall furthest from him in the sick bay, his arms crossed over his chest. He was frowning deeply, but was quiet, at least. Thor was in a chair right beside his bed, all huge hands and that long blond hair, the very picture of fraternal concern. He looked a little sad, actually. It took Loki a moment to realize that this was the first time Thor had seen Tony in the same room as him since... well. His brother would have to get over it, because Loki was not going to play a god spurned.

And Natasha. She was in civilian clothes, standing centered behind and to the left of Thor, relaxed. Loki had quickly acquired a great respect for the Black Window. Females on Earth did not have it so easily as Asgard, where if you were a warrior, that identity was undisputed. Gender was not a part of that discussion. On Earth, even a woman as powerful as Natasha Romanoff faced males who assumed and asserted roles over her without a wisp of consent. And yet Romanoff worked on a team of males known widely as great heroes of Earth, and never had to assert her power. She’d spent such a long time turning the roles on their head to accomplish her goals that, by force of unspoken presence, she never had to justify her position. To respect her was implicit. 

“How long have I been unconscious?” Loki found his voice at last. 

“Five hours.” Natasha was giving him time to organize his thoughts. To put the world in order. 

Thor, it seemed, could not wait. “What happened?” he asked, putting his hand on Loki’s, who winced, glancing down at it. The skin was bright red; he realized everything hurt. It felt as though all of his skin had been slightly inflated, and between it and his muscles and tendons, someone had laid layers of capsaicin. He should still be unconscious, even for a god. It was maddeningly painful. 

“I...” 

He felt it then, like a wave of nausea crashing through his body. He convulsed, turning his body quickly away from Thor and Natasha, facing the wall. The burned skin that covered his body shifted and mottled, charcoal suddenly radiating out from uneven centers, racing out to merge and slide out towards his extremities. His fingernails had already turned black and clawlike, buried into the mattress of the hospital bed, as much in pain as trying to hide them. He closed his eyes, taking a few ragged breaths, shuddering more now out of revulsion than pain. There was no hiding what was happening. A few more even breaths helped him focus, and will away the jotun form. 

It felt so foreign, still. 

“Brother?” 

Thor’s voice was as gentle as the giant hand on his now pale bare shoulder. 

“I’m fine,” he gasped at the touch, looking down at his slowly relaxing hand. He pushed his hair out of his face with it, and took another breath before forcing himself to look at his brother. “I am. I just... I am fine, now.”

“Why do you always turn away?” His brother’s question was quiet, but imploring.

“I found her in the mountains,” Loki said, looking at Natasha and blatantly ignoring Thor’s question. “She had clearly been self-regulating.”

“How did you conclude that?” Loki was thankful Natasha was asking questions again. 

“The degree of her establishment,” he replied. “She had been living alone in a valley not very far from the village for several years, judging from the alterations she had made to the abandoned building in it, and the maturity of her garden and the wear of the paths she’d made to reach cultivated fruit-bearing trees. At least six years. Her name was... Lieutenant Carin Moran. She was an American, who had travelled often to that general region of Costa Rica with family to visit relatives. She revealed she was an early convert who had survived another Extremis going too hot during conversion. Part of her shoulder and face had not healed back from it. She had elected to disappear as soon as the opportunity presented itself. I gathered she visited towns nearby only on a very rare basis, aware of the liability she posed.”

“Why did you bring her to the town?” Natasha asked gently, but she expected an answer. And while it made him wince inwardly, he faced it. The little devils were best dealt with early, so they did not strengthen the big ones. 

“I have experienced solitude for... extended periods, in my life.” Thor shifted, remembering. “I knew T-- I knew Stark had cured Extremis before. If she could self-regulate for six years, I concluded that another few days...” he trailed off. 

Natasha let him be quiet for a moment before asking her next question.  
“Can you remember if there was a triggering event?”

He considered carefully. “Perhaps the fireworks, as I have no recollection of them beginning, and it was dark enough for them to begin. But perhaps the anxiety of being in a crowd after being alone for so long; I can only speculate.”

A long silence stretched. He felt the question pressing on his lips, and gave in. 

“How many--”

“Don’t ask, Loki,” Tony interrupted.

For the first time since waking, Loki made eye contact with the man. He was angry. How dare Tony Stark give him commands? But Tony didn’t look angry, or even return Loki’s angry glare. He made eye contact, and kept it, but there was no hostility. Loki felt a sinking in his stomach. He could remember words he had thrown at Natasha, pushing her in the direction of the answer that would keep the Avengers alive a little while longer. Your ledger is dripping, it’s gushing red. They had a lot in common. Loki had added a lot of red to his ledger, then. He’d known. And while he was in the black, having helped save Midgard on several occasions, it never felt that way. The losses were always heavier on the conscience than the gains.

“I must know.”

“Brother--”

“I must.” Loki looked at Thor, his expression set. Thor looked at Natasha, who gave a slight nod.

“No, he doesn’t need to know--” Tony. Loki felt a flicker of anger again.

“Everyone was on that beach, Loki,” Thor said, quietly.

Loki made a sound, and felt that sinking become a block of ice. 

“Not even-- behind me?”

“You can’t--”

“I can’t? Cannot what, Tony? Blame myself for incinerating a village I had spent four months living with? Imagine the young turned to vapor by a poor decision? Angst over entirely avoidable deaths that served absolutely no purpose? Is there a reason I cannot? Am I incapable?” 

“You were trying to help.”

“What is that common idiom about the road to Hell you taught me...?”

“If you want to torture yourself, have at it,” Tony snapped.

“Oh, yes, you’ve had your fun in that regard already,” Loki said in cool reply. Tony pushed himself off the wall, glaring, and stalked out of the med bay, slamming the door behind him.

Thor, who had been uncharacteristically quiet, reached for Loki’s hand again, and squeezed. To Loki’s surprise, he squeezed back, and laid back against the raised bed again, wondering if he would feel better still covered in burning skin. 

“I am sorry for your pain, brother.” Thor was all of the gentle comfort he had tried to be to Loki so many times since learning the value of compassion here on Midgard. At last, Loki let him be that comfort. He needed it, and it was not forthcoming from many sources. 

“I feel cursed,” he lamented, “that I can only accomplish aid by giving pain.”

“You want my advice?” Natasha spoke up at last, drawing Loki’s and Thor’s eyes both in questioning. “Quit trying to be a hero.”

=======================


	2. beneficial infection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [active warning for knifeplay/BDSM and gore]
> 
> an unforeseen consequence of debauchery introduces a weakness of terrible proportion

“I don’t understand why you’re so fucking upset. I’m the one who was a chesspiece all the way through Thanos--”  
“Oh, so this is what it is about, now? You haven’t simply grown tired of me; now it is that you hold some bitterness you have never before alluded to--”  
“I thought we had a chance for a partnership, but you’re not capable of--”  
“Oh this is very interesting news, Mr. Stark. I seem to remember how little you wanted to know of prophecy, how you wanted no part in structuring fate--”  
“This isn’t about magic, Loki, it’s about being even.”  
“Magic is how I stay even! I do not possess Thor’s strength-- I have none of Natasha’s subtle art of gathering information-- no skill with a projectile like Clint-- and I certainly haven’t your technology. I have prophecy, and chess. Denying me either of those makes me a housewife, not a partner--”  
“She had neither, and she was perfect-!”

Tony was quiet suddenly, realizing what he had said, and Loki said nothing, either. He did not speak ill of Pepper, or try to make assertions about her. He had known her very little. Bringing her up was a weapon in these arguments that Tony wielded unfairly, because Loki never fought back when he brought her up.

Tony looked away. “I know that’s not fair--”

“I am not, and cannot be her.” Loki’s voice was very quiet. 

“I know. I know! I just-- I can’t trust you. It might be over, now-- it might be terrorist cells and overly ambitious politicians forever-- maybe never the kind of-- of architecture we needed for Thanos. But I can’t trust that you won’t be using me, and your brother, and Rhodie, and all of us as-- as ultimately expendable pieces on the board.”

“And I can’t promise I won’t be.”

It had ended the conversation. Tony had shrugged, and walked out of the room, and Loki had taken the bags he had packed after Tony told him he’d wanted out, just the night before. It had felt unfinished, unresolved, and in the years that stretched on since, that didn’t change. 

What Loki couldn’t reveal to Tony Stark was that Tony was the king, in all his games of chess, and Loki would never let the game come to checkmate. 

Not while alive, anyway.

======================

It was hard to track the days when they all took place in a dark series of corridors, but Loki did not care. It had been somewhere near a full year since he’d walked out of Stark Tower for the last time, and that mark had passed at some point while he had been here, but the intention of coming to this place was precisely to miss that unhappy anniversary.

It had worked marvelously. He was sprawled across a green satin-sheeted bed, all white unscarred skin and black hair. A pair of beautiful fraternal twins were curled on either side of him, the man with his naturally tanned arm draped over Loki’s abdomen, the woman on her stomach with her face pillowed on his bicep, peaceful in rest. They had thoroughly worn themselves out with him so far that day; he blissfully dozed himself, never quite dreaming. 

After a few hours of remaining comfortably entwined, he extracted himself, wrapping himself in one of the provided robes and walking out of the room, lazily meandering in search of his next distraction.

Being a hero wasn’t something Loki was built to do, and being a villain while so well-known to the world simply didn’t make any sense, and had come to make him uncomfortable. So Loki was a wanderer, who took what pleasure was offered him-- and when a gorgeous white-haired girl had slid onto his lap at a club in London and delivered a personal invitation from the owner of the biggest fetish house in Europe, Loki hadn’t seen the harm in declining. He’d brought her to orgasm with kisses alone and wandered across the North Sea in a sailboat before making his way into Finland to actually find this establishment. 

The owner, an attractive man in his mid-forties, had personally welcomed Loki, proving himself to be an apt owner of such an establishment. When Loki had left his bed, he’d found that he was welcomed as exuberantly by everyone he met in the sprawling facility, and was blissfully fucking his way through them. 

He kissed the cheek of one of the passing women he’d been with the week before, and the owner spotted him from down the hall.

“Loki,” he said with a smile, and gestured him closer. He spoke Finnish, but Loki knew from experience of making the man cry out that his native tongue was French. “I have someone I want you to meet.”

Loki had not thought he would ever truly enjoy being tied down again, but when Suvi fastened him to a metal table and began to drag surgical blades over his skin with those light, delicate fingers, he was very happy to be wrong. 

She was even darker than the twins, and covered in beautiful pale scars that curled over her skin in patterns that boasted of her art. Her big dark eyes followed every stroke of her knives and as his body followed the lines of the blades, knitting the wounds seamlessly, he could smell how aroused the prospect of having an ever-healing partner made her. 

Suvi was the first person since Tony that he had felt so intimate with. The act of being split open, exposed-- she had run her fingers over the inside of his body, sewn him up, pierced him and stretched his skin into gaping wounds with hooks. She had done it all with confidence, with delight, with a sexual presence that he had been longing for since losing his place in Tony’s bed. He spent more time with her than he had with anyone else in the house, and when he left, he had woven a silver ribbon from Asgard around her silver blades, and told her he would return if she wanted him to. 

But she never called him, and he did not return.

=======================

Loki came to consciousness slowly; it was his first indication that something was wrong. In the seven years he had been wandering the Earth, he rarely woke up from electing to sleep without a nightmare shaking him awake. 

He had not elected to sleep. The very real feeling of his bones slowly moving through his body to correct their alignment, his flesh shifting to expunge thousands of pieces of shrapnel from his skin, told him he had been violently rendered unconscious. 

When he opened his eyes, he was displeased with his surroundings. The room was light concrete, with walls painted white. A small flat-screen television was fastened in front of him, and he was quite disappointed to find that his arms and legs were held fast by chains attached to the ceiling and floor. It was rather familiar, but his instincts solemnly informed him that the likelihood it was Tony Stark that had put him in these chains was abysmal.

He felt that wave beginning to move through his guts again, and knew his jotun form was trying to assert itself, to heal him. He twisted, as he always did when it started to crash through his body like this, and one of the chains began to tear loose from the ceiling with his thrashing. 

“I wouldn’t do that, if I were you,” came a distorted voice, and though his skin continued to crawl and shift, he raised his head, looking at the monitor. The screen had turned blue, and an orange daisy bloom filled the center. 

“Is there any particular reason?” The god began to adjust his weight as he stood on the tips of his toes, and he wrapped his blue fingers around the chains, pulling slightly. They groaned. “They are not well fastened.”

“You should know dominance is not about physical restraint,” came the voice in reply, the daisy very slowly turning counterclockwise. “It’s the establishment of certain rules and the promise of unwanted punishment for breaking those rules.”

“I think you forget who and what I am.” Loki’s annoyance was edging his voice dangerously. He would tear himself free easily-- his body had managed to correct itself entirely now, and the blue skin had disappeared. He would push his way through the door reflected vaguely in the screen and teach this imbecile what it was to attempt to restrain a Prince of Asgard. 

“I don’t. I know who he is, though.”

The daisy and the blue disappeared, and another white room appeared. This one was not quite so barren: there was a sofa, and a shower, and a commode. Curled up on the sofa was a small figure, dressed all in the same blue as the screen, with wild black hair framing a sleeping face. 

Loki felt his heart stop. 

“Oh, I thought you knew. Did she fail to tell you, or did you make yourself too difficult to get hold of? You’re the aloof sort. It’s hard to tell which would be more likely. Don’t worry though-- she won’t be looking for child support anytime soon.” 

Loki heard a sound above him, and he looked up. A square hole appeared, and he heard a machine turn on, and a woman screaming wordlessly. A dribble of blood spluttered out of the hole, and then it began to gush, the screaming only becoming more desperate and pained. There was a grinding sound-- gobs of flesh and bone were falling through the hole in the ceiling, splattering on the ground and over the wall, the monitor, and his body. The screaming suddenly stopped, a gurgling sound replacing it, and then even that was gone. The grinding continued, though, for entirely too long, as more and more gore spewed through the hole in the ceiling. 

On the monitor, the boy in the blue shirt and pants was most definitely awake. He was looking up at the ceiling, confused and frightened. He had huge green eyes, and he was screaming something. For a second Loki couldn’t quite parse the word. He was too used to English. _Äiti! Äiti! Äiti!_

_Mother._

The grinding stopped. There was a slurp as the last of the flesh fell through the ceiling, and then a moment where the only thing Loki could hear was his son screaming for his mother. 

And then, with a wet thud, a head fell through the opening, splattering Loki’s face with blood. 

Even slack in death, and six years later, he knew that face. 

“It would be quite beneficial to your son’s health if you cooperated.”


	3. the cruelest jailer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [no active warnings]

“Sir, you are going to want to see this.” 

Tony glanced up, to JARVIS displaying a video feed. Loki was standing in front of a large dark wood building. In the upper right hand corner was the location: Petersburg, Alaska. Loki was wearing a long black hooded jacket and black jeans that disappeared into badly fitting boots, and he held a man by the back of his neck, facing the shaking camera in someone’s hands, which was the feed JARVIS was displaying. 

“Listen closely,” came Loki’s voice, angry and arrogant over the poor audio pickup. Tony’s breath caught, his body physically remembering that voice even after seven years. “I have delivered Midgard enough victories, and I am weary of your false idolatry. It’s getting a bit extreme, don’t you think?” He tightened his grip on his victim, a younger man in black pants and a white shirt, with a little gold and black name tag. A Mormon missionary. “I was evangelized by this bootscraping. He knew who I am, and he insisted my divinity was false nevertheless. I am tired of your false god. I will show you true divinity.” 

Loki turned his face skyward, and the gray, cloudy sky parted in a perfect circle, sunlight streaming down around Loki and his prey, who was crying and trying to stay very still. The cement in the circle of light was suddenly quite dry in contrast to the rest of the sea-dampened pavement, and Loki looked smug. “I remember something about your god turning a disobedient peasant into salt. A base transmutation.” He lifted the young man to his full height, and the man began to scream. Fur began to sprout from the missionary’s face, and the camera was picking up cracking as his bones were restructuring. Loki held him still in the air as the missionary’s body shrunk and shifted; the screams were turning to howls and whimpers. 

He was holding a wolf by the scruff now, and a wicked grin split his face. “I am the wolf in your flock, and I will decimate you,” Loki snarled. “The heretics will fall first. The faithful will survive.” 

Someone was shouting off camera, and the shaky feed picked up the end of a gun barrel. A shot rang out, and part of Loki’s face disappeared in a blossom of red. He dropped the wolf and sneered, and in an eruption of green fire, was gone. 

“holy fuck, holy fuck,” the camerawoman was saying, but that was all Tony heard. He waved the image away, closing his eyes and running his hand over his face. 

This is getting a little extreme. Loki had said that to him, once. He wouldn’t have said it if he wasn’t trying to communicate. Tony’s mind raced: he’d gagged the god after he’d said that. Was Loki being gagged? Nothing he’d said after that actually sounded like the Loki Tony had come to know, other than that he sounded like the arrogant fuck he was.

And then he felt it. Like someone had taken the veins surrounding his heart and jerked, hard. He gasped, grasping at his shirt.

“Sir?”

“Map,” Tony said, feeling the kind of imperative that he had many years ago, tinkering with Selvig’s wormhole machine. “North American map.”

JARVIS projected a topographical map in the air in front of him. Tony took a deep breath against that ongoing tightening in his chest, an urgency cresting. There wasn’t a lot of time. He raised his hand, the sensors tracking him, and he let that imperative guide him, the way it had back then. It was far less subtle, and even hurt a little-- Loki was panicked-? That was the only thing Tony could tell besides--

“Wellington, Kansas, sir?” The feeling of panic and the overwhelming impulse that had overcome him disappeared, making him feel very strangely and abruptly alone as he stood there, a zoomed map of the flat town in front of him. 

“Let’s get moving,” Tony nodded, his expression set in determination. 

“Flight path written, sir.”

======================

Loki sat in an ice-cold bath, wearing only a long white t-shirt, water dripping off of his chin onto his hands. He was shuddering, trying to cover the fact that he had done more than one piece of magic in that moment. The transmutation had been ended-- the missionary would be human again. That was according to his captor’s plan. The missionary needed to be a vocal victim. He’d been chosen specifically for that.

“I guess it was a decent performance,” came the voice on the screen, the orange blossom slowly revolving still. Loki had begun to associate it with repulsive, syrupy, cheerfulness. “It took you a bit too long to let the wolf go. I thought your concentration would be a little better with your son’s well-being in the balance.”

“It was exactly what you asked for.” Loki’s voice was weary. He just wanted to see that the child was still alive. “I should hardly think it an insufficient gesture.” 

“Like I said, a decent performance. We’re going to have to work on your phrasing though. You’re not pretentious enough. But your shortcomings can be addressed.” The screen blanked for a moment, and a feed of the boy appeared again. 

He was sitting on the floor in front of the couch with a plastic fork from the empty tray of food in front of him. He was talking to himself in Finnish, replaying a story with his single prop. It took Loki a moment to recognize it as part of The Giving Tree. The boy was pretending to be the tree, bestowing the utensil with a showering of apples. Loki gave a little sound as he noticed that the fork was getting slightly longer in the boy’s fingers-- growing with the story. 

He had never doubted the child was his. He was just hoping that his captor would take longer to notice the inherited talent. 

====================

The bullets of the guard’s submachine gun ricocheted off of the Mark 72, and the gun itself crumpled under the suit’s gauntlet, along with part of the man’s hand as Tony blasted him full in the face with the repulsor. These guys were way too easy to cut through in the armor, and he wondered what was keeping Loki so contained. Loki could slice through frost giants. These were overpaid ex-military with gun fetishes. He went to the door the man had been standing in front of-- the most heavily protected part of the compound so far-- and opened it. 

A six-year-old was staring up at him with huge green eyes, a long plastic fork in his hand. 

“Oh.” 

===================

“Explain to me. In clear words. What. The fuck. Happened.”

“Stark blasted straight in through the ceiling. He knew where the base was. He went for the thickest security, made sure no one he put down got up, and found the kid. The kid knew him, or of him, because he ran right up and wrapped his arms around the armor and Stark left. The whole thing happened in less than two minutes.”

“And he left-- didn’t show any indication he was coming for the Asgardian?”

“We can only assume he wasn’t concerned about Loki freeing himself.” 

A long silence. “How many hours of recorded feed do we have of the boy?”

“Around eighty.”

“Plenty of time, if we feed them to Loki in snippets. We can keep him compliant until we can snatch the kid again.”

“You... want us to try to kidnap the kid from Tony Stark?”

“How is that so hard? We kidnapped Loki. His brat can’t hide with the tin man forever.”

=====================

_Years of nothingness. Everything so inaccessible-- the Bifrost invisible, so far away-- the tiny glimmers of light cold and unwelcoming in their distance. If there was a place to go to, he would. But Asgard was a prison, and Jotunheimr death, and Midgard only a gate to Asgard._

_Loneliness would be a blessing. These depths between realms were a cold, weightless, unyielding punishment where he had lost his ability to feel anything, even anger._

_There is no color in space. It is too easy to be so far from anything that the only hint of beauty is the occasional winking out of a star, reminding one that the only permanence is the inability to die in a place where nothing can kill you._

Loki pulled himself into a sitting position in the cold tub, gasping for breath his lungs didn’t really need. Water sloshed out of the edge and he pulled himself out, bare feet splashing in a small puddle of ice-cold water, and he stood dripping, staring across the room at the blank wall, feeling his skin crawling with the physical memory of that weightlessness. He lowered himself to the floor and laid prone, reminding his body of what it was to be grounded, to be pulled against something, even if it was nothing more than a tiny watery rock careening through that vast, terrible nothingness.

He was shaking all over, unable to be rid of that feeling of imprisonment in nothingness. This prison was very real, very tangible, but the sense that he was untethered did not abate. Even if Tony had come, had rescued his son-- clearly he hadn’t-- what would Loki do? Take his son and what? How could he raise a child when he was hundreds of years old and still had no idea what he was doing, as directionless as an adolescent? Mortals spoke of mid-life crisis, where they bought fancy cars, slept with younger people, and changed their entire lives around. Loki had no established life to change around. His entire time on Midgard had been a mid-life crisis. The child was no anchor in all that, just an unfortunate bystander who, if Loki performed well, might have the dubious privilege of being stuck with a god who couldn’t help but destroy in a world that was heartbreakingly delicate. 

Behind his eyelids, he saw Suvi’s slack face, splattered in gore. He turned himself over, to stare up at the ceiling that had disgorged the pile of meat that had once been a beautiful mortal woman. His very presence endangered the residents of this world. It was wildly unfair to them he continue to remain. 

When he knew the child was safe, he would leave. Asgard might be unwelcoming, but at least he could do no more damage. 

Until the child was safe, he would play along.


	4. highlighting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> light in comparison to my other chapters. Well, sort of. It's light for _this_ series.  
>  \-------------

Tony stared across the kitchen at the six-year-old sitting on his counter. Barefoot, one foot tucked under the other knee, wearing a bright blue pair of pajamas, he looked uncannily like Loki. Those eyes did it, and the long black hair. It was a mini Loki, drinking the end of a carton of orange juice out of a whiskey tumbler. 

He took a deep breath and swirled his bourbon in the bottom of his glass. 

“You speak English?” 

The kid looked at him with those huge green eyes again, and was quiet. Tony cringed. This would be really difficult if the kid didn’t speak English. It would be really difficult anyway. Tony could have JARVIS translate, but that would get... burdensome. 

“Ya,” the kid said at last. “I speak English.” It was heavily accented, but Tony sighed with relief. 

“Good. Listen, until your dad gets around to busting himself out... don’t touch anything. I’m not a kid person. Lot of delicate stuff in this place. Don’t go busting stuff up.” 

The kid stared at him. It was getting creepy. 

“Yep. You can sleep on the couch. It’s leather, no drooling. We’ll, uh, find you a toothbrush...” he trailed off, and took a sip from his bourbon again. “What are you staring at?”

“I think my mom is dead.”

“People die...” the rest of it dissolved on his tongue. The kid looked... fragile. He knew it was probably just because he looked so much like Loki, and Tony knew that the boy could probably survive quite a lot, but he didn’t want to upset the kid. It just felt cruel, and Tony wasn’t as good at cruel when he cared. 

It surprised him, that he cared. He’d never met this kid, and he definitely hadn’t met his mother, but he knew Loki, and... Loki cared. It was much easier to be cruel to Loki, as an ex, than it was to be to a child that had clearly been no part of this breed of high-stakes game before being dragged into it as a hostage.

“Yeah. That’s probably true.” 

The child looked upset at that, but looked away, biting his lower lip and trying to keep it together. Six years old and trying not to cry in front of a stranger. Tony could identify. 

“Hey. C’mere.” He put down his glass of bourbon on the counter and wrapped his arms around the boy, who immediately buried his face in the same part of his chest that Loki had for years, and began to cry. Tony held him, rocking slightly and stroking that wild black hair, not hushing him or telling him it was okay. It wasn’t okay. His mother was probably dead, he’d likely never met his father, and he’d been kidnapped and held for who knew how long as leverage before being blasted free by a complete stranger in a bright red suit. Tony had been through some rough shit when his parents had died, but in terms of childhood trauma, this kid had him trumped. He deserved some compassion, and at almost fifty years old now, Tony could find it in himself to give it. 

Maybe he had finally reached an age where children were precious. 

The kid had stopped sobbing quite so much now, and was now just curled against his chest, grasping on to the adult that had steadied and supported him. Tony sighed, and pushed the boy’s hair away from his face. 

“Right. So. Back to business. You got a name?”

The boy sniffed and looked up at him, wiping at his eyes. “Topias.”

“Tobias? Who the hell named you, a bishop?”

“No. To **PI** as.”

“That’s no better. That’s not even a real name. Ow! Did you seriously just kick me?”

“ _Slerssi_ , my mom named me.”

“JARVIS, what did he just call me?”

“I believe it’s slang for ‘prick’, sir.”

“No fair, swearing in other languages. You’re definitely sleeping on the couch, Topi-boy. We had a moment, moment’s gone, you wanna swear at me, do it in English.”

===========================

Tony pretended during breakfast that he hadn’t woken up when Topias had climbed onto the end of his bed in the middle of the night, wrapped in the blanket Tony had given him. The boy had done exactly that for a week now; in fact, ‘Topi’ hadn’t slept on the couch once, except when he fell asleep during a rerun of Breaking Bad. 

As Topi inhaled a stack of waffles and mixed berries, Tony’s current personal assistant, a thoroughly vetted and clever twentysomething named James or Jim or John or something breezed through, leaving a box and setting down a tablet with some documents to digitally sign. Tony nudged the box aside and started to flip through, signing with a flick of a stylus. 

“Not the last one,” Topi said, his mouth half-full.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full.” Tony peered over the tablet at Topi. “What?” He began to read the document more thoroughly; it was a controlling share purchase in a small pollution solutions company that had enjoyed a good, albeit brief, sidebar writeup in Forbes. 

Topi chewed and swallowed. “Not the last one. _Sowilo_ in opposition. It is full of... full of shit, you would say.”

“You know, every time I start thinking you might not be so weird, you say something like that. How are we supposed to bond when you creep me out?”

Topi just giggled and picked up his whiskey tumbler full of mango juice. Tony squinted suspiciously at him, but tagged the document for review. A three million dollar investment could wait a couple of days. Loki had a prophetic gift, after all. That could conceivably be genetic. 

“The box is for you,” Tony added as an afterthought, putting down the tablet and stabbing a piece of waffle with a fork. 

Topi popped up from his chair and pulled the box down, discarding the top and pulling out a pair of sneakers. He held them up and gave Tony a thoroughly unimpressed expression.

“What?” Tony said, with his mouth full. “Clearly you’ve never walked in New York before.”

=====================

“Please explain, clearly, why you thought it was a good idea to take Loki’s son into public while Loki is clearly still being coerced?”

Nick Fury had an unimpressed expression that was much more intimidating than Topi’s. Tony was used to it, as he was often the subject of just that expression, but Topi was sitting beside him picking at a bandaid on his chin with a very guilty expression. 

“Kids need exercise, socialization, whatever. It was a lesson in decision-making.”

“Decision-making?”

“He couldn’t have the life sized stuffed horse and tiger, he had to choose.”

Topi giggled, but stopped quickly under Nick Fury’s baleful eye. 

“So you made a bad decision.”

“How was it bad? As soon as Natasha’s done with Goon Number Four we’ll have an actual idea of who’s coercing Loki and where he is.”

“And you couldn’t find out on your own?” 

“Do you think I didn’t try? The site I found Topi in was under a farmhouse that was abandoned on property owned by Bank of America. Bank of America records say the grandkid of the last resident mortgaged it, didn’t want to keep it up, and let it be foreclosed on. They have no records of construction on the site and the grandkid had no connections to anything other than the McDonald’s he works at in Topeka. Everything was a dead end, and I wasn’t going to sit down and ask questions of an idiot with a gun fetish with a six-year-old hanging off of my neck. All of the cameras were closed-circuit, didn’t go anywhere except onto a portable hard drive that did nothing but stash files, and there wasn’t anything remarkable about the programming for anything that would point me anywhere other than Google.” 

“So what prompted you to take Topi out?”

“I was bored,” Topi spoke up at last. “I asked him for days. Finally he said yes, but only if I was quiet for a whole day, and I was, so he did.” 

“You don’t have to lie to cover my ass, kid.”

Topi scowled at Tony, and looked away from him and Fury both. Fury was smiling. He met Tony’s gaze, and gestured to the kid. “You must have done something right.”

“It’s genetic, Asgardians love me.”

“Thor informed Natasha that he would turn you into paste if you didn’t make good with Loki.”

“Except Point Break. That’s not the point. The point is, I made the call to take the kid out, and no one got hurt that didn’t deserve it for trying to kidnap a half-god from Iron Man.”

“It does not work like that,” Topi said, resting his chin on the table and looking up at both of them. Tony looked at him expectantly, but the kid didn’t continue.

“Seriously, I thought we’d been through this. If you’re going to come out with shit like that you have to actually finish the thought, don’t leave me hanging.”

“I did finish the thought, it does not work like that, period. You are either god or not-god. Do you not read books? What is not a god about the ruler of the underworld?”

“Look, kid, myths are great and all for cultural identity--”

“Do I go around telling you how to be an inventor? Please cease telling me how to go around being one of Loki’s kids.” Topi looked truly grumpy at that. 

“Kid has a point,” Fury shrugged. “Do you have a plan once we’ve established a who-what-where?” 

“Of course I do. Go get Loki.” 

======================

Loki had not moved from the floor since returning from Alaska. Every so often, the monitor would display video feed of his son sleeping, or eating, or singing to himself. Without toys, he seemed remarkably able to keep himself entertained; he had at some point turned on the shower and as Loki lay there, pretended it was raining. 

The feed cut and the orange flower appeared, spinning slowly. 

“There has been a breach. Contain or kill Stark, or you’ll get to meet your kid while he gets turned to slush.”

Tony. Loki’s heart seized as the door to his cell opened. What had taken Tony so incredibly long to come and take the boy? He sat up, panicked. Tony was going to get the boy killed. Loki needed a plan this second-- he needed to facilitate three escapes, now. 

“What the fuck are you waiting for?” came the voice, and the sound of the grinder switched on in the ceiling. Loki lurched to his feet. He slid his mind into the strings that connected him through the spear to Tony, as he had on the day of the Alaska event, and a decade before, to manipulate Tony’s subconscious into releasing him from his Asgardian prison. A blue webbing appeared over his hands as he began to walk down the corridor. His panic was making it difficult to manipulate the fine strings-- he had never before felt this kind of fear, the fear of a parent for the safety of a child. He began to pull on the strings, twisting and dragging them back to the part of his heart that was panicking for his son, to guide Tony to the boy before they hurt him-- he pulled-- he pulled too hard--

Loki gave a howl as the links snapped, recoiling. His hands were covered suddenly in angry burns, but the true pain was in his chest, where the strained magic had backlashed; he could feel one of his ribs melting. Far worse, far more terrifying to the god, was the sudden and hideous nothingness that suddenly gaped there, where just a minute before dwelled the need to be beside someone, the need for a companion-- the part that had once glowed just watching Tony sleep was gone.

The god stood, stunned in place by the ghastly new wound in his being.

The door at the end of the hall blew open, and Tony lowered his gauntlet. He strode towards Loki, but the god retreated. 

“You’re going to get him killed,” Loki panted.

“What the fuck did you just do to me?” 

“I have a _son_ , you’re going to get him killed if you don’t--” a spray of bullets cut him off, embedding themselves by the dozen in the right side of his body, the rest ricocheting off the Mark 72.

Tony caught Loki one-handed and snapped around, blasting the machine gun toting flunkie full in the face. Loki was still conscious, his body already rejecting the pellets of lead, and he twisted in Tony’s arm, raising a hand covered in green fire. Tony started to feel that spot in his chest keening. He couldn’t keep fighting Loki and the waves of goon squads. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, and fired a repulsor through Loki’s chest. The god coughed blood, and lost consciousness.


	5. this is but a balm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [no active warnings]

Tony poured a glass of milk and placed it on the kitchen table in front of Topi. Dummy was holding a script letter guide, and Topi had dutifully copied the first four letters before beginning to finish the page with doodles of horses and snakes. 

“Hey, you’re supposed to be tutoring him, this isn’t art class,” Tony scolded the robotic arm, which tilted a little in response and held the script writing guide closer to Topi. The boy ignored it. He also ignored Tony, and instead added diamond shapes to the back of a serpent biting its tail. “Focus up. A good signature is important. Autographs get boring.”

“I’m six,” Topi complained.

“I’m fifty, what’s your point?” Tony sat as Topi picked up the cup of milk and poked at the liquid. 

“Are we going to SHIELD today?”

Tony plucked the writing guide out of Dummy’s fingers and closed the workbook. “Yeah. I figure the more I shove you in Fury’s face...”

“Do you think he will let me see my father?”

Tony leafed the workbook pages through his fingers. Topi had asked that question every day for a month now, and Tony was running out of ways to answer it. 

SHIELD hadn’t let anyone but Thor have contact with Loki. The only information that Thor could give was that Loki’s ongoing unconsciousness was not like their father’s Odinsleep. Loki was whole-- he’d healed Tony’s repulsor blast before leaving the compound-- but he hadn’t come back to consciousness. The ongoing slumber had SHIELD deeply concerned about the god’s stability, and so he had been quarantined. Thor had been denied any additional contact when he could give SHIELD no further information.

Tony had known, when Loki had before been blasted into unconsciousness, that the god would wake. He’d had a gut instinct that he knew was accurate when it came to Loki. He was beginning to think it was why he’d actually been able to say goodbye to him-- Tony would know if something was truly wrong.

Now he couldn’t. Whatever had happened down there had left Tony holding the end of a dangling rope, and when he’d pulled it back up, all he knew was that he was physically desperate to get Loki back on the other end of it. 

“What do you think?” Tony answered at last. Topi picked at the pencil eraser for a moment in thought, and made eye contact. 

“I need to see him,” he whispered. “I have to.”

==================

Four SHIELD agents flooded the room, one scooping the six-year-old off of Loki’s bed, one trying to untangle the silver ribbon the boy had tied around Loki’s wrist, and the other two with guns raised. Topi screamed as the big agent tried to pull him away, thrashing. The other end of the ribbon was tied to the boy’s wrist, and his hand was curled around it, pulling. He was kicking and clawing at the big agent, alternatively howling wordlessly and screaming in Finnish. 

On the other side of the SHIELD compound, Tony watched on a monitor with his arms crossed over his chest. Nick Fury was discussing with Agent Hill alternate quarantine methods while ignoring Tony’s presence pointedly. It was Tony who had written the program this morning that got Topi past the security protocols, and Tony knew he was on Fury’s shit list for it. JARVIS translated Topi’s screams, when they were coherent. 

“You’re my dad! You’re my dad! I’m your son! Mom is dead! I need my dad! I need you! Dad I need you! Tony needs you! Dad please!”

Tony disengaged the translator. They had discussed what was likely to happen. Topi had even listened, so far as he could tell. This was part of what they had known would happen-- that Topi would get a few minutes, at best, and then be dragged away. The kid had a flair for the dramatics-- and that tiny ribbon wrapped around their wrists was uncommonly strong. One of the agents had produced a knife and was trying to saw through it, but it wasn’t snapping. Another agent was holding Loki bodily down, because the ribbon was threatening to pull the unconscious god off of the bed after Topias.

Tony uncrossed his arms, leaning towards the monitor. That agent should have been able to cut through that ribbon. Topi hadn’t told him about it this morning. In fact, Tony hadn’t seen it before now. Over the monitors they could hear Topi just screaming the same word over and over again: Isä! Isä! Isä! 

“Cut that fucking thing off him already,” snarled the big agent that was trying to drag Topi away. The agent with the knife grabbed Topi’s wrist and held it still, sliding the blade between the boy’s skin and the ribbon on his wrist. 

“Sh-”

A pair of slender white fingers snapped the blade, and the agent looked up as the tip of it clattered to the floor. 

Loki was prying Topi out of the arms out of the large agent, gathering the six-year old against himself, whispering to him in Finnish and a language that was nothing like a Midgardian tongue. 

The room was very still suddenly, as Loki held his son in his arms for the first time. The only sounds were those whispers, coming from both the boy and Loki. The god was running his fingers through his son’s black hair, and touching his face, and smiling in a way no one had ever seen him smile before. 

===================

Tony watched from the doorway as Loki lay beside his his son on the bed Tony and Loki had shared for three short years. The child was solidly asleep, sprawled in the middle of the bed, and Loki lay on his side, those beautiful green eyes fixed on the face of his son. He was stroking Topi’s hair, entranced by the sight of his child, healthy and whole, and Tony had seen Loki weep enough to know that Loki had probably just barely stopped before Tony came to check on them. 

Since breaking Loki out of the compound (owned, it turned out, by one of Roxxon Oil’s board members, whose revealed scheme had exonerated Loki and prompted a change in leadership of Roxxon), Tony had been unable to get the god off of his mind. Topi’s presence had made it bearable, and Tony suspected that if he had been a younger man, he would have handed the boy off to child services and drowned his obsession in bourbon. 

Something had happened there that left Tony with a need to have Loki close. Waiting for Loki to wake had been excruciating, particularly late at night, when Topias was hogging the middle of the bed and talking in his sleep in a language that JARVIS could not translate-- a language Tony had only heard from Loki and Thor previously. It had been very difficult to hear the tongue after seven years, particularly out of the mouth of a child. Tony’s associations with the language were from situations that were depraved. On those nights, when Tony couldn’t sleep, the distance of Loki had made his entire body ache. Tony had imagined him, vividly. He had watched monitor footage of their first days together. He had watched videos they’d made. These things barely took the edge off. He had taken Topi to the SHIELD compound day in and day out because being within a city block of the sleeping god had made it tolerable. 

Now, with Loki just a few strides away, Tony felt the nagging ache in his chest where the arc reactor had once been relax away. He stood straighter, fingers relaxed rather than clenched into fists. His feet didn’t hurt. His mind was clear of the sensation of having ideas speeding through his brains like derby cars on nitro. His ideas floated, vague but ultimately accessible, without the horrible sense that if he didn’t act on them, now, he would lose them forever. If there was bliss to be had outside of orgasm or drunkenness, this was it. Tony had found it. And his new happy-drug, Loki Odinson once Laufeyson, would be going nowhere.

====================

He felt used, but at least he felt whole. They showered separately afterwards, and he felt alone, but when he laid down on one side of the sleeping child, the other laid down opposite, but facing. And when he saw that little smile, he felt better, and hoped it would be ok.


	6. a complication of divinity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [NSFW]

“You just want him around so he’s easier to manipulate.” 

Loki was utterly unsurprised at how quickly this argument had become about Tony’s lingering distrust. It was, after all, what had driven them apart, and had once been an acceptable risk. Not so, now. Topias’ attachment to the human was forcing Loki to actually contend with Tony’s inability to fully trust, a condition that had not started, nor would end, with Loki. Humans were frustratingly imprintable. He hoped Topias would not acquire that trait.

“I do not know what answer you want from me, Tony.”

“Let him go to school.”

“American education is one of the least desirable institutions--”

“Then pick a country, he needs an actual education--”

“I had no formal education!”

“That’s not at all relevant, Loki, you’re a god--”

“So shall he be-- so he is! In Asgard children are left to do what they like as soon as--”

“This isn’t Asgard, Loki, he’s only got so much time before--”

“My son will live until he chooses to die, he has all the time in the universe--”

“I don’t! I want to see him graduate high school-- college!”

This made Loki stop. He stared at Tony, frowning; the human had crossed his arms over his chest and looked away, avoiding Loki’s eye contact until Loki stepped forward and grabbed the hair at the back of his head and forced a hard kiss on Tony’s lips.

“I do not understand why you do not simply tell me you are concerned about such a thing,” Loki murmured, releasing Tony’s hair to gently stroke his cheek. Tony leaned his forehead against Loki’s, eyes closed. 

“The same reason you cover your face whenever your body turns blue.”

Loki shoved Tony away, which was not as satisfying as it might have been. He could not push too hard, or Tony would be injured, as the delicacy of his lover was a constant constraint. He glared for a moment at the man, and began to stalk out of the room. 

Even after four months of living with Tony again, Loki was surprised that Tony chased after him. This was a new thing. Tony caught Loki’s arm and pulled him back into the center of the room. He kissed Loki, just as forcefully as Loki had kissed him, but it was a pleading kiss, with begging lips. Loki was beginning to understand these kisses as Tony’s way to say, ‘no, please stay’. They were kisses that made the hole in his chest a little less frightening, at least when Tony was pressed up against his body like this. Loki returned the kiss, fiercely, trying to punish Tony for comparing mortality to being-- being what Loki refused to be. 

Tony broke the kiss. “You forget what it’s like to be with an ageless god for me,” he panted slightly. “No suit is going to make me immortal.”

Loki ran his fingers through Tony’s hair, and gave him a forgiving kiss, a light brush of lips on lips, and then a little less chaste. It had the intended effect of distracting Tony as he sucked and lightly worried at Tony’s lower lip; Loki’s mind was whirling. He lifted the human and set him on the bar, kissing and lightly biting Tony’s neck. One of his hands moved up under Tony’s shirt, circling his nipple with his finger. 

“I-- can’t think when--” Loki cut Tony off again, seizing Tony’s mouth with his own, squeezing that nipple as he pulled Tony’s belt loose from his hips. 

“Don’t think,” Loki whispered against his mouth, lowering his mouth to Tony’s adam’s apple and sucking there for a moment, biting his shoulder lightly again as his hand found Tony’s cock and pulled it from his trousers. He bit Tony’s shoulder harder, earning a sharp gasp, and dropped his mouth to Tony’s dick, lips encircling the tip of the man and sucking hard. He could feel the tremble in Tony’s thighs, hear Tony gasping to try to fill his lungs against the shuddering in his spine that distracted him from coherence. Was it possible? Would it work? The god’s mind spun with prophecy even as he ran his tongue down the underside of Tony’s cock, eliciting a deep moan. He squeezed Tony’s balls with one hand and his shaft with the other, his tongue darting between his fingers, and then moved his hand to take him in whole for a moment, swallowing and pulling. Tony was begging, his words jumbled, as Loki's mouth worked his cock, manipulating- Loki was always manipulating- his body to the brink of orgasm and madness, and then sliding his lips off of him entirely, looking up at him with those stunning green eyes.

"Tell me what you want, Tony Stark."

"You. Always you."

===================

“What we mean to say is, well, we understand how unique a case Topias is, and we understood when he was enrolled that he would... have the capacity to... to interact in a unique manner--”

“Mr. Odinson,” the headmaster interrupted the guidance counselor, to Loki’s relief. The latter had been spouting nothing of substance for well over a minute and a half at that point. “Your son turned another student into a horse.” 

“Was it any particular breed of horse?” Loki asked, still annoyed his day had been interrupted for these trivial concerns.

“A paint horse--” offered the guidance counselor, only to be interrupted again by the headmaster.

“Mr. Odinson, when you enrolled your son at this institution we had assumed you had actually some intention of instilling in your son respect for his fellows, and so far your reaction has made it absolutely plain that you have no such concern--”

“I enrolled my son to socialize him with human children, that he might gain appreciation for them as companions and an understanding of their limitations. Respect is something that must be earned to be bestowed, and I know my son enough to know that he would not perform a transfigurative unless requested or he was suitably incensed. And as he didn’t turn the child into a breadbox, he couldn’t have been that angry.”

Both men were staring at Loki, openmouthed. The guidance counselor’s eyes were wide, and his posture was tense and open with curiosity; the headmaster had his arms crossed, his nostrils flared, his spine stick-straight. 

“The girl was well-known for her equestrian pursuits, and she and Topias have demonstrated affection--”

“It is unacceptable behavior,” snapped the headmaster. “Absolutely unacceptable.”

“Why?” asked Loki, careful to allow his expression to only show a light smile. 

The headmaster spread his arms as though it should have been self-evident. “A horse! And this isn’t the first time he’s done something so ridiculous! He spent an entire afternoon turning pieces of paper into insects--”

“Blue morpho butterflies in science class--” Loki was amused at the expression of sheer rage the headmaster shot at the guidance counselor for that interruption.

“And he covered an entire class of students in illusions so they looked like pagans!”

“Headmaster Remsfield, they were reading the King Arthur classics, he made everyone look like Arthurian nobles.” The guidance counselor had finally finished listening to the headmaster’s rants and had turned his attention to him now. “I’ve never seen such an engaged group of seven-year-olds in my life as that afternoon. I asked you to stand in on this because you wanted to express your concern about his integration, which has been an issue with some of the older children in his advanced classes, not because I was inviting you to rail against the boy’s unique contributions to the classroom.”

“If you interrupt me one more time, James, I will have your job,” growled the headmaster.

“This is a waste of my time,” Loki sighed. “If the parents have no complaints, if the child has no complaints, and if my child is not being threatened, I see no reason for me to be here.”

“I will not tolerate this kind of chaos in my school,” the headmaster rounded on Loki again. “If you cannot control your child and ensure he-- he conforms with our principles--”

“Conforms?” Loki raised his eyebrows, and the guidance counselor at least drew back a little, recognizing the danger in that word. “Your principles, as they were explained to me, education as innovation and adaptation-- a school that promised to nurture creativity even in the hardest of sciences. Your teachers do a fantastic job of that, but it seems to me, Mr. Remsfield, that you are not on board with your own mission.”

“Disturbing classes with such freakish displays is not part of our principles,” snarled the man. 

“You are referring to a child, Mr. Remsfield. It is a little disheartening to hear you use a term like ‘freakish’.” Loki had learned, being among humans so long, that displaying his anger made them more fearful than was helpful to his reputation. 

“There is no other more appropriate word.”

“I beg to differ. My son is a godling. His displays are not only natural, but--”

“Godling. You still call yourself a god? Your presumptions of divinity, Mr. Odinson, are not welcome here.”

“Presumptions of divinity?” Loki stood, at last, and the room temperature plummeted, an effect he would normally try to shake off, but today, the effect was not unwelcome. “I have endured great insult in this room, Mr. Remsfield, but no longer. I accept that you may not believe in the rituals and rites of my people and our worshipers. I respect your cultural decision. But you do not get to look me in the eye and tell me I am not a god, when I am the only god, save my son and my brother, you may ever see in your life.”

“I see the Lord Our God every day,” hissed the man.

“Your choice of worship does not render the divinity of myself or my son null,” growled Loki.

“You are not a god.” 

“No. I am not a hero. I am a god.” Loki looked away from the headmaster, and to the guidance counselor, who had backed his chair away from the desk to give himself space from Loki and Remsfield. “I am afraid I am going to need to withdraw my son. I hope you can fax me a packet of appropriate paperwork?” He picked up his coat from the chair and draped it over his shoulder, giving a curt nod at the headmaster. 

As Loki left, the room was suddenly a normal temperature again, but the headmaster did not notice. He would never be warm again. While Loki had come to understand displays of anger generated unwelcome fear, he had realized how effective the subtle curses could be. As he got into his car, he made a mental note to start teaching them to Topi.

=====================

“Please, Dad. I need you.”

Loki’s heart stopped, and he untangled himself from Tony’s limbs, pulling on a pair of pants. “I’ll be right there. Just stay there, Topi. I’ll be right there.” 

Tony was also getting out of bed. Parental instinct, Loki had learned over the last seven years, was something that could absolutely be learned. Tony had learned it quickly. They didn’t even speak. Tony summoned the Mark 83, a suit that literally manifested from implants he’d installed into his largest bones and along his ribs, and through the evening they flew, a flock of crows and a red-suited aging hero, to touch down on the back deck of a Cheviot Hills estate. Tony’s helmet melted away and he looked around as Loki’s form coagulated beside him, reaching for the back door handle before the birds had finished gathering into his body. Loki headed straight through the house to a set of stairs that went to the basement. 

Topi was kneeling beside another thirteen year old, his hands covered in blood, his tear-streaked face smudged with it. He looked up as his fathers crossed the room, his hands shaking. “I, I didn’t mean to,” he hiccupped. 

“What happened, Tops?” Tony knelt beside the prone boy. Loki could see the submembrane displays flickering at the edge of Tony’s vision as JARVIS appraised the bloodied child.

Loki knelt beside Topias, wrapping his arms around him and pulling him back a little. He didn’t need JARVIS to tell him the child whose blood was all over his son’s hands was dead. 

“We were-- we were rough housing-- Zachie was showing me his judo throws-- I don’t, I don’t know, he fell-- I ran at him like he told me-- and-- he hit-- and then he-- Dad what happened, he’s not, he’s not--”

Tony met Loki’s eyes, and glanced at the edge of the marble-topped coffee table a few feet away. 

“Where are his parents, Topias?” Loki asked, stroking his son’s hair back from his face, trying to soothe the panic he could see spiralling through his child. 

“They went on a date, they said they’d be back by midnight, we were-- Dad we were just-- we-- he’s not, is he? Is he dead, Dad? He’s not dead is he?” Topias turned those huge green eyes on Loki’s face, desperate for an answer. “He...” he whispered, and then he was trying to pull his way out of Loki’s unyielding arms. “Zach! Zachie! No! Zachie! Zach you have to!” 

Tony gave a sound, like he’d been hit in his abdomen, and Loki heard himself give one as well as the room was suddenly thick with magic. He adjusted his grip on his thirteen-year-old son as the boy twisted in his arms, trying to touch the dead boy. Loki stood, pulling Topias further from the corpse, but the room was completely filled already with the weight of the boy’s raw magic, as Topias attempted to draw his friend back from the dead. 

“Stop,” Loki whispered against the magic, but Topias wasn’t stopping. “Stop!” The tongue was Asgardian now, and Loki’s arms held Topias in a vice against his chest. Cold sliced through the room, so strong that Tony’s helmet was re-engaged against it, and Loki’s skin turned blue. The frost giant sorcerer held his son, whose caramel skin was also slowly shifting color. Red eyes met red eyes for a moment, and Topias buried his face in Loki’s chest, blue fingers gripping Loki’s shirt. 

“But we can,” the boy hiccupped against his father in Asgardian. “We can. We have to.”

Loki held him looser now. “You could kill yourself doing it like that,” he whispered back. 

“Then show me how,” Topias turned his blue face up to his father’s, red eyes wide. “Please, Dad. You know how. You’ve done it before. Please.”

“Topi, bringing humans back is different than gods and giants. They remember death. It can drive them mad. It can destroy them. And resurrection binds. He would be part of you, always. You can’t bring every person back. Things happen. Horrible things happen. You can’t bring them all back. You have to let humans go, Topi.” 

“I want him to be bound to me. We can’t let him go, Dad. Zachariel won’t go crazy. He’s the smartest kid I know. He has to be okay. Dad, I have to bring him back. I don’t care if even I go to prison for my whole life for hurting him, he has to come back. I need him, Dad. I can’t lose him. It’ll never go away, Dad. I have to bring him back. You-- you brought back-- he’s mine, Dad. Like that. Please.”

Loki stared down at his son. His son, his brilliant son, who knew all of these things, who could identify such old magic without being taught, who had come so early into his own. Who could, if he wanted, raise that dead child, and much more besides, if he had an idea of how. Who could do it without knowing, and was willing to do it and die. 

“He is yours?” Loki repeated. 

“I always knew, Dad.”

“You cannot, always.”

“Just him.”

======================


	7. hollow praise

Topias slammed the door in Loki’s face. The god heard the restored old motorcycle roar to life, and listened as his son disappeared down the mountain. 

Loki stood still for a long moment, his arms crossed over his chest, shoulders hunched. Topias had learned that human skill of knowing the perfect way to wound with words, and since turning sixteen, was wielding it with glee. Loki had not expected it. Rebellion in Asgard was comprised of such different elements. 

Tony was faring far better. Loki suspected it was because Tony didn’t bother laying down ground rules for the teenager-- and that Tony still acted like one, despite being sixty years old now. Enough of his bones had been grafted in the nanotechnology that made his suit work that Tony had no fear of breaking a hip riding motorcycles through the mountains in the middle of the night with Topi. Loki felt they were united against him and his need to be certain he understood the world, while Tony rebelled with Topias gleefully, careening off into the night, leaving Loki in the position of either following them or just waiting for them to come home. As Topias knew when Loki followed, tailing them only exacerbated their arguments, and so Loki lingered at home with JARVIS to play chess with Dummy and feel alone all over again. 

“You should have just said yes,” Tony drawled from the living room, leafing through the current issue of Car and Driver. “Sure I want him in college locally too, but we can just rent a place near wherever he goes.”

“Which he would only resent more,” Loki snapped. “He already thinks I exist solely to shadow him and ensure he lands in no trouble. Moving to follow him to college would only fill him with more bile.”

“Then maybe you could actually let him get into trouble.” Tony shrugged, and Loki felt incensed. 

“His name is not Thorson, Tony. Trouble is not so simple for him to evade as to smile and heft some firepower, like some people.” It was absolutely directed at Tony now, and he knew it. 

“How is he going to learn how to get out of trouble if you don’t let him get into it then?” Tony flicked the magazine so it landed on the table with a snap, glaring up at Loki. “You learned firsthand.”

“And spent ages floating through deep space going slowly mad, came back and play scapegoat for an entire planet’s troubles for years, and then be rejected by the one person I’d come back for.” Loki regretted it as soon as it came out of his mouth, but it had already escalated the argument, and like most arguments, once escalated, there was no return course.

“It was a mistake, Loki, we’ve been over this.”

“A seven-year mistake. Neither of us are difficult to find.”

“We wouldn’t have Topias if it hadn’t happened!”

“We? It seems Topias has chosen his preferred companion, and it is not me.”

“It’s just a phase, Loki, every kid goes through it--”

“While creating noise complaints through the entire valley with his dad? Is that common?”

“It’s a bonding thing. He’s got to have someone to identify with for a while--”

“He’s not some human adolescent, I should have sent him back to Asgard--”

“So I’m not a fit role-model?”

“No! You might be a brilliant human, Tony, but you are human. Topias will live on the scope of worlds--”

“What if he doesn’t want to?”

“He does not have a choice,” Loki hissed. “We do not have those choices. We are gods, we are bound by the Norns tighter than any other creature in the realms. You are given the agency of your actions and your choices, Tony, but we will forever be bound by the fates written for us.”

“What part of the Edda say that you spend years with me?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Tony--”

“No, seriously. What part of all of this is just fate? You made the choices you did, from the Chitauri on up, and you had no idea if it would work. You looked forward and you hoped. The only leg up you got in that was a bit of prophecy-- you didn’t know you’d end up with a son, or still on Earth. None of this is part of the Edda, is it? Or is it nestled somewhere between you fathering Fenrir and accidentally killing Baldur?” 

Loki threw up his hands. “I’m done,” he growled. “I am not going to argue you about fates you cannot conceive.” He turned and stalked out of the house, leaving Tony swearing alone.

It was the day Tony began drinking again.

===================

Topias snorted into his tumbler of bourbon and let his head fall back, shaking with laughter. 

“And then,” Tony hiccupped, “and then, he turns to Rhodie, and he says--” another hiccup “-- he says, ‘of course not, it’s a staff’!”

They both exploded with laughter, sloshing their bourbon, Topias more than Tony, who with the practiced precision of a lifetime alcoholic tossed back the rest of the tumbler and continued laughing with his adopted son. Gasping for breath, Tony refilled their glasses, and after a few moments more of laughter, they lapsed into a comfortable quiet. 

“I still don’t get it,” Topi murmured. “Why you fell in love with him.”

“You know, it was weird... but I knew when,” Tony said, the drink making his tongue slightly thick as he spoke.

“When what?”

“I mean...” Tony sipped his bourbon again. “I mean, I’d had him chained up and been beating the shit out of him for weeks. You’d think... you’d think he’d hate me. Doesn’t matter what happened with Pepper. You torture someone, you expect them to hate you. But when... when we were all done, that last night, and he’s laying beside me, I asked him-- I asked him why. And he said. ‘All loss speaks the same tongue.’”

“You two are so fucked up.” There was no laughter this time. Just a somber observation.

“Yeah. But there’d be no you if we weren’t.” 

Topias nodded, and finished his bourbon. “When is he gonna come back?”

“Your father always comes back,” Tony said. “In his time. S’what makes him different from his brother: he feels in a way I don’t think anyone else can. And he still doesn’t make the emotional choice.”

“Bullshit. He stalked out after an argument like a fucking child.” Topias didn’t mention that it had been just after he’d done the same thing-- but he had been gone three hours, not four and a half months. Topi had started college at UCLA in his father’s absence. 

“He does shit for a reason. Literally, Topi, he doesn’t do anything without knowing how it’ll affect what he’s trying to get done.”

“He’s the ultimate manipulator.”

“Of course he is. He’s Loki, not fucking Martha Stewart. Do you expect him not to be? Look, kid--” Topi refilled his tumbler again. “--If you think anything he does is an accident, you’ve never met your father. He lives to sculpt fate. It won’t be long before you’re doing the same thing. It’s the shape of your self. Frost giant or not.”

Topi frowned, and watched as Tony slugged his bourbon again.

“All loss speaks the same tongue?” he repeated.

Tony nodded.

“You’re too easy.” He laughed, and Tony laughed, and they missed Loki.

===================

“You were gone eight fucking months,” hissed Topi, keeping his voice down. The night nurse glared at them anyway. 

“And you got to spend that entire time with him. While he was still-- still healthy.” The momentary catch was the only indication that Loki was at all affected.

“You can heal him, can’t you?” It was a demand.

“Not now,” Loki replied, his face blank. “And he would not want me to.”

“You’re full of shit, Tony loves being alive--”

“Do not tell me what he loves and does not love, Topias. Time comes for all mortals.” 

“Horrible things happen. You said it yourself. But we can change the things we care about-- we can do that--”

“I have, Topias. I have done all I can, and Tony knows that. It is not a matter of closing a few wounds and reversing some liver damage. I cannot rewrite the day he is meant to go.”

“This is bullshit. You’ve never cared about Fate, just what you want. Don’t-- no. Don’t fucking kid yourself, or try to tell me I don’t know. He always loved you more than you loved him.” Loki winced, and Topi took that as an admission. He scowled at his father. “I’ll be back for the funeral. That’s the last time I ever want to see you.” 

And he was gone, a simple winking out, there and then gone from Loki’s life. 

The god ignored the night nurse and opened Tony’s door, feeling for the first time in his life fatigue as he looked in at his sleeping, aged lover. Sixty years was not so many, really, even for a human, but Tony had lived them hard, and they had come all at once for him, armor-plated bones or none. He laid beside Tony, and draped his arms over his lover’s chest. 

“I have loved you as best I can,” Loki whispered to the sleeping human. “It has not always been well. But I have loved you the entire time.”


	8. Epilogue

_In the end it was my grandmother Frigga who convinced Odin that my father’s grave should be on Midgard, not my uncle Thor, who was so certain he would. It was strange to visit Asgard for the first time, and no better to be a pallbearer there. After the pyre, I was allowed to take my father’s ashes back to Midgard, and so they lie together, peaceful in death in a way they never were in life._

_I will never claim my fathers had a perfect, or even good, relationship. They spent long years in utter bitterness toward one another, and more in the kind of dysfunctional love that resembles addiction more than a relationship._

_But if their love was an addiction, it was a life-sustaining one. It was an addiction that gave them both direction and purpose, even if it was simply to be the other’s bane and obsession. It was a love that destroyed them; in the case of my godly father, in a way that could never have happened otherwise._

_It is a love I never wish to experience._

Topias closed the notebook, stirring his coffee absently as he looked, unseeing, across the coffee shop. Ten years had not made anything clearer. He’d spent time away, in Asgard, searching for perspective and understanding, but as Frigga reminded him often, sometimes, with family, that never materializes. 

“Topi?” 

The voice was very familiar, and made him start a little, looking up at the dark-skinned man standing by his table in a priest collar. 

“It is you,” the man said, smiling wide and sitting opposite him. This close, Topias could sense something incredibly strange. “Topias Lokison. I haven’t seen you since we were thirteen.”

“Zachariel DuBois,” Topias blinked, his face slowly breaking into a smile. “Oh my gods. It’s... you guys moved right after--”

“Right after you saved my life,” Zachariel grinned. 

“I...” Topias was trying to sort through the memories, and the strange, strange feeling he was getting at the moment. 

“I’m so glad to see you,” Zachariel reached over and took Topias’ hand, squeezing it. The contact was like being struck by Mjollnir-- an electric shock that boomed through Topias’ system, leaving him unable to breathe and staring across the table at his childhood friend, similarly afflicted.

It had materialized. Why his father had agreed to let him save, and ultimately bind himself to, Zachariel. Why he had died. Why when he had died, his divinity had simply vanished-- why he had not incarnated some other way. Why, when Topias had last seen his father, Loki had been unable to save the man he loved. 

Topias caught his breath, weakly. “He made you a god, too.”


End file.
